Water treatment plants, including desalination plants, generally consist of numerous filtration vessels, where each vessel typically includes multiple spiral wound membrane elements. Generally, water treatment refers to processes that make water more acceptable for a desired end use. Frequently, the desired end use is human consumption; however, other water treatment processes are designed to provide water suitable for industrial processes, medical use, the recycle of water into the environment, and the like.
Exemplary brackish water and/or sea-water membrane desalination plants typically include numerous vessels, with each vessel typically containing 6-8 individual spiral wound membrane elements. A medium sized 10,000 m3/day desalination plant operating with an average flux of approximately 20 L/m2h, wherein each vessel includes six 8-inch membrane elements, will require approximately 116 vessels, and a total of nearly 700 membrane elements. Larger desalination plants, such as plants having a capacity of up to 330,000 m3/day, can require a total of more than 40,000 membrane elements. As would be expected, the quality of the overall permeate from the desalination plant depends upon the performance of each individual membrane element. Due to the large number of total membrane elements, for example 700 or more than 40,000 membrane elements, as mentioned above, the monitoring of the performance of the individual membrane elements is both very important and very difficult. The inability to closely monitor the performance of individual membrane elements can lead to premature replacement of individual membrane elements (i.e., replacement of the membrane element before the performance and corresponding water quality has degraded) or the failure to replace membrane elements when needed, can lead to increased operating expenses and poor performance (i.e., reduced quality of processed water), respectively.
Current methods for monitoring membrane element performance in a water treatment plant typically include the individual probing each vessel, a process that is both time consuming and costly. The process of individually testing each membrane element in an entire plant consisting of numerous vessels and membrane elements can take days, or even weeks, depending on the size of the plant. Furthermore, by the time the measurements have been completed, the plant conditions may have changed as compared to the conditions when testing started. Thus, there exists a great need for a novel integrated method and system that provides for the preferably rapid monitoring of individual membrane elements and means for communicating data relating to each membrane element to a central location.